Our palms and throats still tickly from applauding a play by Shvarts in cringing-comic mode; someone has been dispatched, clutching the token, to get the galoshes from the garderobe. Little me waiting, swaddled to the eyebrows, for a troika by the Mikhailovsky House, with crumpled trophy fading in the pocket— the toffee-paper programme from the show.

The curtain’s down. The lights have all been doused. The greasepaint washed away. Oakum and horsehair hung on their nails until the second house. It’s nice, a theatre with no audience. After his last-act triumph over evil, meal-ticketed hero makes for the buffet. And for us too there is a fine finale— our tram arrives almost without a wait.

A scarlet dragon coming on, right at us, two different-coloured eyes burn at its brow. And all the long long way to Prospekt Gaza is peristalsis in the monster’s bowel.To be continued...